


In (Your) Head

by Clever Telling (ChildofWinter), Sabrina Hawthorne (ChildofWinter)



Category: Homestuck, Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternian Empire, Colony worlds, F/F, Helmstroll Sollux Captor, Legislacerator Terezi Pyrope, Lesbians, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Subjuggulator Gamzee Makara, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChildofWinter/pseuds/Clever%20Telling, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChildofWinter/pseuds/Sabrina%20Hawthorne
Summary: A revolutionary on a colony world. A Soldier en route to enforce the empire's will. A man, alone, in hiding. An archaeologist investigating a mysterious ruin. A Helmsman on the verge of death. A Rainbow Drinker, losing an invisible war. A lonely mechanic in a too-big house. A Princess, no longer as deep as she once was.
Relationships: Nepeta Leijon/Terezi Pyrope, Sollux Captor/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	1. Terezi Pyrope

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crossover only in the sense that I'm transposing the rules of Sense8 onto Alternia with some of my favorite trolls, and Equius. Check tags regularly for updates on characters, ships, etc.
> 
> For those seeing this go up before another chapter of The Price of Knowing, worry not -- I plan on finishing this as a way of getting back into the rhythm of fiction, and hopefully finishing another chapter by the end of July.

The rattling of the ship as it settles out of Jump sends a loose bottle off the edge of a table in the next room. You told Minrva it would happen, but did she listen? No, of course not. Never mind that you’re the most accomplished Legislacerator in the past 6 sweeps. It surely doesn’t matter that you’ve got more confirmed kills than everyone else in your squad, including your commanding officer. Nope. The only thing that matters is that you’re poor blind Pyrope, and it’s a miracle you weren’t culled, etc. Whether you’ll be tasked with cleaning that up before landing is about a 50/50.  


The ship shakes again and _you see it. The flash, like a star blinking to life, too beautiful for such an ill sign. You were expecting it, but the surprise still makes you lose your balance, and you lose your footing, your clawed foot slipping in the mud. Turning back, you see_ what the fuck? What the fuck was that. You look around you, sniffing deeply – no mud, only the sterile teal floor of the dropship. You’re still standing, rank with the rest. You can tell Officer Maries noticed you move, so you straighten and still yourself. You’re not scared per se, but you don’t want her on your ass moments before you drop.  


It doesn’t matter; she takes three sharp steps in your direction – you can smell the traces of rubber as her heels impact on the metal. You don’t have to smell her breath to feel her face so close to yours, but you do anyway. It’s good, surprisingly. Does she keep up her oral hygiene during Jumps?  


“Getting another feeling, Pyrope?” Her voice is smooth, not belying the rows of jagged teeth she’s baring at you mockingly.  


“Yes sir!” Your response is instant and trained. You’re not scared of her. “I’ve got a feeling we’ll kick these barkbeasts back to their caves, no problem.” You know everyone can hear you.  


Maries laughs coldly. She knows you’ve said exactly what you need to say, but she doesn’t care. She trusts you, even if she’d find a thousand ways to get you culled if she could. “Hear that ladies? Pyrope says we’ll be fighting barkbeasts today!” The cheer rises, just as you knew it would, and Commander Maries turns away from you, back towards the bay door.  


“Legislacerators, Ready!” She calls, and you respond with the rest. You always forget to appreciate the feeling of being able to yell, properly yell, before you go hoarse from battle. The bay doors open.  


There’s a roar like your Lusus as you hit the mud. And it isn’t lost on you that it’s mud – in the brief moment before the gunfire starts, you file away that observation for later perusal. You raise your rifle and let out a few rounds, knowing the first few are shots in the dark regardless of whether or not you can see.  


“Pyrope, what the hell are you doing!?” You almost flinch.  


You chirp back to your left, “What do you _mean_ what am I doing? They’re firing on-” But even as you speak, you realize you don’t hear any fire. What the hell You could’ve sworn...  


“Get yourself together, Pyrope! You might have just blown our cover, don’t fuck up again or I’ll courtmarshal you!” You grunt the affirmative, moving forward slowly with your squadmates. Several minutes pass in near silence, the only sounds being the squelch of boots and the occasional *click* of your safeties switching off. Maries would kill them all personally for having them on in the first place. You don’t speak up.  


You get a waft of Myrrhi’s stink, and you realize he’s moving closer to you. “Whatcha smell, Pyrope? Any Romeos on the wind?”  


You shake your head. “Just your stench, M. Maybe give me some space and I’d be able to get a better read on these barkbeasts.”  


“Would you stop calling me that?”  


You whip your rifle around, on high alert. You don’t know that voice. It came from-  


“Woah, P, hold the fuck up. Sorry I got your gander up, Jegus.” You realize you’ve got the tip of your barrel up to his head.  


“Sorry, M. Thought I heard something.”  


“Well shit, I’ll give you some room them. Call out if you hear it again.”  


You nod and turn back towards the quickly approaching hill. The fog hasn’t let up, and you think you must be at some hell of an altitude for it to be thick like this. Thankfully, you can see a fog cloud rolling down the slope to the west. You gesture to your squad and speak barely above a whisper. “They’re this way.”  


“How do you know?”  


You shake your head. You probably shouldn’t explain what just happened to you. “I think I heard them moving.”  


You raise your pistol, moving forward in a half crouch, and you can tell from the sound that twelve of your subordinates follow. As you approach, you think you can smell someone approaching.  


You call out, quietly enough that you hope only your squad can hear, “They’re coming in from the east!”  


You turn, and sure enough, you smell the gunpowder before you hear the shots. You tackle Myrrhi to the ground in the split second before the noise begins. The cracks of gunfire creates stinging points of burnt hair above you, and you have to suppress the urge to pinch your nose. Looking up, you lose sight of the hostiles, but you can see muzzle flairs in the fog, so you raise your pistol and fire your rifle. You can smell blood – olive, you think – as two of your three rounds hit. The third Romeo seems to have ducked your shot. You don’t have time to process what it means, but know, somehow, that the both of you can see each other. You stand up and raise your gun. The sound of the battle is dying down. You hear the Legislacerator Commander calling for a retreat. You fire even as you hear your opponent do the same. You fire at the same moment you smell the sharp tang of the Romeo firing. Everything goes quiet.  



	2. Nepeta Leijon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A discussion.

You wake up in pain. Oh fuck, are you in pain. You give yourself a couple of minutes to come to before you go to the trouble of figuring out what exactly hurts, and you manage to identify two points. One in your shoulder, the other your leg. Probably gunshot wounds, you think. Yeah, that makes sense. You were in a skirmish, and...  


You come to again, probably a while later. You’re not dead, which means the fight is probably over. But you’re still in pain, which means you probably haven’t been out long, and you probably haven’t been treated. You try to sit up, but the pain shocks you awake. Battle. There was someone, they were firing on you, they were- ”Jegus, will you calm the fuck down?” You speak before you actually think about whether or not she can hear you. Wait, she? Okay, time to prioritize. First things first, you have two gunshot wounds. Then, you can figure out what’s going on with your head.  


You sit up, more slowly this time, making sure to keep weight off your left side, but that only makes your right leg hurt more. Looking around, you finally have the wherewithal to see that you’re not where you were when you went down. A cave, maybe? Yeah, looks like it. Not too far in, either. You can see the moonlight filtering in from the entrance. Did someone move you?

Your question is serendipitously answered when you hear a sound from a little further in the cave. You can’t turn to see it, but you know the sound. It’s a purrbeast. And there it is now; it enters your line of sight, still purring, totally calm.  


”Shit buddy, you scared the piss outta me for a second.” You give him a closer look and smile to yourself. “You look just like my Lusus, you know that?” You figure he does; he wouldn’t have dragged you here otherwise.  


Reaching out, you try to stroke him, but you forget about your arm and it spasms with pain. The purrbeast moves quickly to support you, and you nuzzle him, falling into an old rhythm by instinct.  


You push away gently and wonder if… ah, there it is. “Hey, buddy, can you pass me my bag? It’d do wonders for me.” Sure enough, the beast drags your pack to you, and you unzip it to look for proper treatment.  


A moment of rummaging around, and there it is. You wonder, as you always do, about its shape; it has so much in common with your pistol, you almost start thinking about why tools of such different purpose might share so many design principles, like the shape of the sword being developed independently by separate cultures, and what that might say about the nature of violence. But before those get very far, you take a knife to the seam of your pant leg, peel bloodstained cloth away, and press the muzzle of the gun-shaped tool to the wound. Three deep breaths, each growing faster, and you pull the trigger. The foam fills the space the bullet left with a hiss, and you mimic it – you can feel it filling you up. There’s pain, but the numbing agent gets rid of that in a matter of a second or two. What’s really unpleasant is the feeling of your nerves, the deep ones that don’t get sensation from the skin, experiencing a feeling of pressure for what’s probably the first time. It doesn’t do wonders for your sense of survivability.  


”Glob, I hate that foam shit.”  


”What the fuck!?” You whip your head around, and the beast, now on alert with you, raises his hackles. To your utter shock, you see someone. A troll, sitting in the same position as you. She’s got some kind of red visor over her eyes, and she’s wearing a teal _libra_ on her chest. Legislacerator.   


”Have You figured it out yet?  


It’s a moment before you respond. You look to the beast and realize he’s not growling at her, just in her general direction. He can’t see her. “Figured what out?”  


She doesn’t respond right away, but when she does, it’s as if she expects her reply to make any sense. It doesn’t. “That gun is gonna dry up soon if you don’t tend to your shoulder.”  


Somehow, her suggestion snaps you to attention, and you set to stripping your torso to get at the… holy shit. Even as the movement jostles the bullet lodged in your shoulder, you look at the spot where it’s buried in the fat and muscle and you see nothing but grey skin.  


”What the fuck? Yeah, imagine how I felt when I got a shot of biotic foam to a hole in my leg that isn’t there.” She smiles, a wide, toothy thing that reminds you of some predatory fish. You can feel yourself in the beginning of a panic, trying to piece together everything – the woman who doesn’t seem to be here, the phantom bullet wound, and the fact that your sense of smell has never felt this sharp. But at the same time, you can tell you’ve already put it together. You already know the answer, somehow. Or maybe...  


”You do.”  


”What’s funny,” she says casually – and despite the fact that you _know_ she’s trying to be deliberately obtuse, you know she understood you perfectly – “is that you woke _me_ up. Seems like you should have put this together by now.”  


You don’t let your annoyance be known. You know she can feel it as if she’s in your head. Which, you suppose, she is. So instead, you hand her the gun. She laughs. You blush with embarassment.  


”Come on, Romeo, you get this by now.”  


”Yeah, but I can smell me, I know. Funny how you can do that now, right?”  


”Okay, that I know you don’t understand.” You think for a moment. Maybe this is a chucklevoodoo? It would make sense for those purple bastards to use their bullshit to tie people together like this. But no, it doesn’t make sense. A Subjuggulator wouldn’t do this to one of his own. And hell, why would they bring one to this backwater planet anyway? Much more likely you’re in shock. Something cracked in your head, and you’re experiencing some kind of unreality. Yeah. Probably PTS or something.  


But no. You know that can’t be. You think back to yesterday – you knew the drop troops were to the west, and it wasn’t because you saw them.  


”It was because I could feel the moisture on my skin.”  


”Because you knew I was aiming for your head, even though you couldn’t see through the fog.”  


”Or at all.” She lifts her visor, still not looking at you, and you can see what’s left of her eyes. She smiles again.  


”Hey, I wonder if...” Her tone is curious in that same casual way, as if she hasn’t got a bullet wound in her shoulder. She lifts a hand to her face, and you feel the touch of fingers, running with gentle familiarity against your scars.  


”Fuck.” This is surreal. You close your eyes and shake your head, and when you open them again, you’re not in the cave anymore. It’s not foggy anymore, but you can still smell dew condensing on what little grass is left on this slope.  


”So it goes both ways?”  


”Seems like.”  


”So.” You’re not sure exactly what you want to say. You find something eventually. “Do you need some foam?”  


She laughs coldly. ”You don’t even know where you are. You think you can limp out into the world to save some poor empire stranger? No thanks. I’ll take my chances with the wilderness on this hick planet.”  



	3. Equius Zahhak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Equius Zahhak runs an errand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a brief description of bodily mutilation. It is the first sentence without blue text.

You fucking hate the city. Well, scratch that. You love the city on its own merits. It’s a hub of innovation and technology, and you can always get whatever parts here that you can’t machine yourself at home. It’s being _in_ the city that you can’t stand. It’s loud and crowded here. You feel like the whole place is made of driftwood – you can’t move properly without breaking something.  


You wouldn’t even be here under normal circumstances. Usually you send a drone to pick up what you need. But as fate would have it, the part you need now is necessary to fix the very drone you usually send on errands like these. So you walk the streets, anxious that you might somehow crack even the pavement with your footsteps.  


The moon hangs like a pink hole in the sky, letting in some pale blood-light. The street, thankfully, is pretty empty, although it’s still not empty enough for you. The combination of fuzzing neon and occasional shout of a drunk clubgoer is enough to give you a headache. You begin to sweat.  


You turn a sharp corner and nearly rip a wire fence gate out of the ground when you pull it open. “Sorry,” you say to no one in particular. Other side of the gate, backdoor to the left, and the bead curtain right inside, Before you is a shop you’ve never seen in person before; a short folding table, covered first by a thin, raggedy blanket, and then again by a range of pistols, magazines of ammunition, grenades, and what you vaguely recognize as a bolt gun. Behind this is a thin man, a bronze blood, you know from previous remote visits. He greets you with a smile, and you can feel yourself sweating more heavily.  


You turn away from the table and down the cramped hallway, careful not to knock over the flimsy table. A few steps further, and the building opens up into a slightly smaller, but still cramped, room. Here are shelves of parts from floor to ceiling, forming a tiny labrynth. You shuffle sideways between the shelves – it takes you four minutes to round the first corner, and another two to round the second, where the part you need should be. Sure enough, there it is – behind you. Shit. You try to turn, but you feel your shoulder touch the shelf behind you and immediately stop – if you move another inch, it’ll tip, and then everything will be over. You slowly align yourself back with the corridor and begin to make your way out. You’ll need to make your way back, turn around, and –  


You see someone move in front of you. Past a shelf, there. Not the bronze blood at the entrance. They’re wearing… a cloak. You don’t let it do anything but startle you at first, and you finish wriggling out of the maze, only to see that the stranger is gone. That’s odd.  


You enter the makeshift hallway facing the other way, and  you can feel the manacles boiling the skin off of your wrists even as they hang you above the crowd. You are strong, however, and you do not attempt to hold back your cries or your tears. You let your pain be seen by those gathered. You speak once.  


”I have suffered not because it will do good, but because those in power think that punishing altruism will dissuade it. But I know better. I know you, my many-blooded people. I know that when you see kindness rewarded with pain, you understand that the ones inflicting it must be stopped." As you speak, you can see your mother among those gathered. You smile at her, and wish she had not come.  


Focusing again on the many here now, you speak twice. "Many of you here see me as a criminal. A traitor, a liar and a freak. Raised without a sign, without a lusus, and without the proper color in my veins. You do not see me as one of you. And I am sorry for that. I only wish I could have spoken to you, and that we could have become closer as a family. For that is what we are, is it not? Siblings, bonded in the chains of the Condescension? And family loves one another, and does what they can to ensure that their loved ones are able to make their own way. Do not let her make you cold, my family."  


You spasm, pain shooting through you through your wrists and through your mind. There, at last. For so long you have wanted children. You see them, there; not as they are, but as you know they will be. There, a tall woman with a pen behind her ear. A soldier, dressed and armed to defend those under the empire’s thumb. And next to her, another woman, laying down her arms for her love, and for a better future. A helmsman, ready to end himself for the slightest chance at a better world. A woman, smiling with such great protective love that you know she would do the impossible for the rest. A roboticist, so much kinder than he’ll let himself be. The princess, an apple falling miles from the tree. And there, behind the others, almost hidden for how small he stood among them. How hard his life will be, and it’s your fault. You meet his eyes. You speak thrice.  


”Do not let them make you cruel."  


There is an unholy noise as the entire room is collapsed, one shelf knocking into another until you’re the tallest thing in the room. You do your best to hurry out of the building. Your best isn’t very good.  



End file.
